The impact flung Stephen forward, knocking his chin against the dashboard. Rachel jammed on the brake, the bite wound sending red rockets of pain up her leg. By the time she brought the pick-up to a halt, gas was spreading in a pool around the pumps.
“Quick, get out!” she said, frantically releasing Stephen’s seatbelt. He held his jaw in pain, a trickle of blood at one corner of his mouth.
But he kicked his door open and dragged his backpack with him, not willing to abandon his comic collection even if it meant Zapheads might catch him. Rachel grabbed her own pack and followed out the passenger’s side and away from the powerful gasoline fumes.
Good thing the power’s off, or those pumps might have flooded the whole parking lot.
And good thing none of that grinding metal caused a spark.
“Nice driving,” Stephen said.
“Next time get Jackie Chan.” She grabbed Stephen’s wrist and hobbled toward the station’s shop. Only when she reached the door did she realize the lack of power was now a negative instead of a positive.
The door was automatic, opening via an electronic motion detector. And electricity was now the province of thunderclouds and nylon, not wires and switches.
“We have to break in,” she said.
“No way,’ Stephen said. “That glass is at least an inch thick. I think it’s bulletproof.”
The Zapheads must have been drawn to the populated area—perhaps this had been their home and they were operating on some sort of lingering memory or instinct. But whatever the reason, they were agitated by this sudden disruption. They had probably wiped out all the survivors in the area weeks ago, and now two humans had upset their routine and revived their need to destroy.
Because they were coming fast.
“I won’t be able to outrun them,” she said, pointing to the soaked red bandage on her leg.
“Sure, you can,” Stephen said, eyes wide with fright. “You’re Rachel.”
“No,” she said. “You need to run. As fast as you can. And don’t look back.”
Stephen was near tears. Rachel’s eyes were also stinging.
It’s the gasoline. Yeah. Right.
“I’ll distract them,” she said, pointing toward the McDonald’s restaurant. “I’ll go in there and get them to chase me while you run into the woods.”
“We need a distraction?” Stephen said, rubbing at his eyes and sniffling. “Then start a fire. That’s what that guy did back at Taylorsville, remember?”
Rachel recalled how the massive bonfires had attracted the Zapheads, creating a compelling, noisy, and colorful chaos that likely appealed to their sense of destruction. If devastation was their drug of choice, then Rachel could serve them up a hell of a happy hour.
The question was how to do it without immolating both her and the boy. She’d seen enough “dumb redneck videos” on YouTube to know that playing with gasoline and matches wasn’t the smartest move in the world. But she didn’t have time to craft a clever fuse that would offer a reasonable safety barrier.
Jackie Chan would already have this problem solved.
She dug in her backpack, tossing out cans of food and bottled juice, wondering why she’d hoarded so much while they were still in a civilized area. But that was the uncertainty of Doomsday—it wasn’t Doomsdays, plural. It was all now.
“Okay,” she said, drawing out a long wool scarf she’d filched from a department store. It was tan, accenting her chestnut eyes and dirty-blonde hair, and she’d grabbed it fantasizing about a future where fashion mattered. “Improvising here. Go dip this in the gasoline and be careful not to get it on your clothes.”
Stephen dutifully ran toward the shallow pool of fuel. Rachel dug into a side pouch until she found her Bic lighter.
Thank God for butane.
She realized it was the first time she’d thanked God for anything in weeks. If those shambling, scurrying mockeries of humankind cascading toward them were part of some divine plan, then she was perfectly willing to exercise her free will to destroy them.
Is killing only a sin if you know what you’re doing? Maybe these Zapheads are God’s truly blessed creatures, because they don’t suffer the pain of guilt. They’d nail Jesus to the cross and call it a favor, not a sacrifice they’d have to repay over centuries.
“Hurry, Stephen!” she yelled.
The nearest Zaphead was now about a hundred yards away. Two small bands of them approached from each direction of the side road, too, and Rachel realized for the first time that they now seemed to travel in groups, like pack animals.
She’d had a vague sense that their behavior was changing, but she’d been too focused on daily survival to question it. Like most “Ah-ha” moments, this one came in such a rush that she had no time to process, only react.
Stephen dragged the scarf back by holding the frayed threads of one end, inadvertently laying a thin trail of gasoline as he hurried away from the pumps.
“Good job,” she said when he returned, taking the scarf from him and laying it on the pavement. “I’m going to start calling you ‘Chan Junior.’”
“As long as you don’t call me ‘sweetie’ anymore.”
“Sorry. Just a habit from my counseling days.”
Which weren’t that long ago but were literally from another world, the world of Before. And those experiences hadn’t taught her one damn thing about setting a gas station on fire without blowing herself and a kid into a thousand pieces.
“I can’t light this until you leave,” she said, thumbing the Bic. “You might have some gasoline on your clothes.”
He sniffed his sleeve. “I don’t smell nothing.”
“Start running,” she said. “Behind the station and up the hill.”
“What if I get lost?”
The Zapheads were now close enough that Rachel could hear their strange hissing—it sounded like the spitting heart of a giant winter fireplace. “I’ll be along real soon. I just want to make sure you’re safe before I light this.”
Stephen nodded. “Maybe DeVontay will see the smoke.”
“Maybe so. Now get.”
She waited until he disappeared around the building, hoping more Zapheads weren’t descending from the surrounding hills. There was nothing she could do but hope.
And set their world on fire.
She flicked the Bic, lifted the frayed end of the scarf, and applied the flame. At first the fibers curled and shrank, and then fire spread along the length of fabric faster than she’d anticipated. She dropped the scarf and fled, wondering how big the explosion would be and how many steps she would get before—
KA-WHUUUMP.
Much of the force of the ignition blew straight into the air, lifting the metal canopy from the pump island. The windows in the front of the shop shattered inward, and the Toyota truck rolled over on its side, flames licking along the oily bottom of the engine. The force of the sudden combustion hit her in the small of the back like a fist. Rachel was thrown onto the ragged landscaping between the kerosene pump and dumpster, rolling in the sodden mulch and scratchy evergreens.
Holy hell.
She rose to her hands and knees, coughing and choking as black plumes of smoke roiled around the parking lot. She didn’t know how many pumps were yet to catch fire. She’d read somewhere—probably some wacky Web link her grandfather Franklin had emailed her—that gasoline stored in tanks beneath the surface couldn’t explode because of a lack of oxygen, but the tank openings would burn like giant flame-throwing Bic lighters until the fuel was depleted.